BigSound
Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
September 10-13, 2013
Sitting on the bus
into Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley for the final night of BigSound – Australia’s reasonably
modest answer to the behemoth that is Austin, Texas, music industry shindig
South By South West – I find myself savouring the calm.
It’s early evening
on a Thursday, traditionally a day to let loose, to get a jump on the upcoming
weekend, but it’s been a long few days and so I’m enjoying the relative quiet;
the hum of the engine, the gentle forward motion, the space, the solitude.
It’s short-lived
though. “Last stop before the city,” yells the driver, a pork barrel of a man
in navy blue shorts, neck like a ham, and so I’m ejected onto the sidewalk at
the corner of Ann and Brunswick and the calm is all but a distant memory.
For this is the
Valley, where the city’s drunken elite meld all too easily with the barrel
bottom, a place that used to house the bohemian element, before rapid, and
rampant, development had them fleeing across the river to the relative safety
of hippie haven, West End.
The music still
resides in back alleys though, upstairs in odd warehouse spaces, boutique
venues still thriving and so it’s the ideal place for BigSound, this year running
for the 12th time, a three day conference that brings all involved
in music in this country, and beyond, together to nut out problems faced by an
ever-shrinking industry, to collaborate in order to overcome barriers to
growth, to find the ‘next big thing’, to talk.
Idle talk, big
talk, small talk, chit chat, back chat, talk back. It’s all about the talk – to
paraphrase from ‘79 sci-fi flick Alien,
at BigSound, no one can hear you scream. Because they’re all too busy talking.
It’s a tsunami and it washes over you leaving you battered, bruised ear drums,
craving silence. I long for the bus.
“It’s about connecting people,” says Executive
Programmer Graham Ashton, this year being his last BigSound at the helm. Given
it’s late on the Thursday, he’s sufficiently relaxed. “People come from all
over the world… [BigSound] is about making connections.”
Networking, they
call it. It’s happening all around us, standing as we are in the dingy smokers
area out the back of what was once Mustang Bar, people with sky-blue lanyards
talking shop. Or perhaps, given the hour, shit.
During the day,
over the past three days, BigSound is a mild-mannered conference, comprising
panel discussions like The Future Of
Australian Music, Indie Labels 2013 Style,
Touring Tips & The Live Music Environment,
along with a plethora of In Conversations.
By night however,
it’s like this; there are over 120 bands playing over two nights this year, and
so music flows, as does the hooch, and an environment like this is fostered,
where people spill outside in between songs to network. To connect.
“There are no
rules to this,” Ashton says after a bit of thought. “That’s why music is so
exciting. Every band is different, every idea is different, there are no rules.
One thing though, [BigSound] isn’t education, it’s inspiration.”
The inspiration
for most comes in the form of the music itself – scungy rock ‘n’ roll bands,
thundering country, lilting folk and pogo pop, for this is why we’re all here.
Whether it’s Billy Bragg or Robert Forster playing Bakery Lane to a full house,
or some young quintet out of Melbourne playing an early slot to an almost empty
room, the entire place throbs with not only literal sound, but with an inspired
energy. People are excited, they want to share, and so connections are made, as
they should be.
It’s not all beer
and skittles however. One of the reasons events like this exist is to talk
about what’s not going right, about how to change same, how to better the
industry and to help all those who work within.
In typical
fashion, during the The Future Of
Australian Music discussion, outspoken promoter and label head Michael
Chugg lashes out at commercial radio’s local music quotas, saying, “The quota’s
far too low and they take advantage of late night… running tracks from midnight
to dawn. They’ll deny it, but it’s true… It’s bullshit, and it’s holding the industry
back.”
At the Byron Bay
Bluesfest showcase at lunchtime on Wednesday, festival director Peter Noble
attacks on a different front, saying in front of a large crowd, “I don’t want
to criticise [politicians], but they’ve got to emulate,” referencing the lack
of support the Australian government offers its musicians compared to their
Canadian counterparts.
Perhaps he should
have had a word in Wayne Swan’s ear, although the ex-Treasurer seemed far more
preoccupied with UK punk poet Billy Bragg, seen at both his show and his
keynote speech, tweeting later about the latter, “A really engaging discussion
by Billy Bragg… about the power of music and the purpose of politics…”
It’s a shame Bragg
wasn’t around a few months ago to give the same talk to the crumbling Labor
party, but I digress.
So it remains to
be seen what comes out of BigSound this year, at least in terms of solid,
lasting, effective change. If you were to just buy a ticket to the music side
of things, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that music in Australia is
alive and well, and it is, without a doubt.
A new government
though, not one renowned for generous arts funding, will have an impact, but as
the dust still settles, people nursing final night hangovers, it seems
inspirations and connection, the initial aims of BigSound, have been achieved. There
is, however, still a lot to talk about.
Samuel J. Fell
*A different version of this story ran on Crikey, Friday September 13, 2013 - click here for that version.
No comments:
Post a Comment